


She Would Kill an Angel

by orange_8_hands



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abandonment, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Fallen Castiel, Gen, POV Female Character, Post Season 5, Vessel Fic, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:47:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened to Claire Novak</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Would Kill an Angel

**Author's Note:**

> Between writing this and the original posting of this, I re-watched The Rapture. Whoops. Turns out he does turn around (twice) and Claire was a lot more forgiving than reality would have you believe, so this is based on a slightly AU version of that episode.
> 
> Originally posted on [my LJ](http://orange-8-hands.livejournal.com/1349.html), July 2011.

It always seemed like you were defined by the one who left, not the one who stayed.

By this point, she had talked to angels. She had been one, for a brief, shining moment of fury and glory and thunder and disconnect between the hands holding her father’s face and the feel of rough stubble and pleas. _Take me_ , he had whispered, and she had slumped forward when her body became her own again and the silence inside became tinged forever by what had been there. 

But before that, before angels – the angel – and before the demons, one who wore her mother and a whole bunch of others tracking her, tracking her always, there was just waking up one morning and seeing her mother’s red tinged eyes and being driven to school by her mother instead of her father and eating dinner without him for the first time and then him never showing up no matter how many times she fell asleep and woke up.  

Truthfully, the angels didn’t make much of a difference. Because by that point it was seven months later and she had already been disappointed, betrayed, broken by her father not being there. Beyond church and school and the general layers of life she had believed absolutely in her father’s steadfast hands and warm presence. For him to have left was unthinkable, laughable, impossible.

And yet he had. He said yes. He left even before an angel entered his body and walked away.  

It made believing in monsters and angels and demons a lot easier. At least those made _sense_. Stories being true were _believable_. Not like what had happened. Not like the true ordinariness of having a deadbeat dad. Not the true normalcy of having a family split apart. Not the truth of being left.

She designated certain spots of sorrow inside her “Father,” and other parts “Missing Angel.” The Father parts were vast and dug holes into her heart. The Angel parts were the missing bright light of righteous certainty and faith hollowing out her stomach.

She was empty. She was bleeding out love. Loneliness curled itself around like a cat finding a warm spot. Hate came in shoving waves. Basic belief was cracked and scratched. Her mother couldn’t stop it any easier than she could stop time.

This was how Claire Novak became a hunter.

***

She counts the dead instead of sheep.

Her list goes quickly. She takes from others’.

She always starts with her mother’s name. Amelia. Amelia Esma Holtin Novak.

She can picture the first time a demon wore her mother’s face. She can picture the slit throat years later. She can picture cuddling on the couch and going to the movies and hands holding hers as the ink gun stained her twelve-year-old skin for the first time.

She always ends with her father’s name. Jimmy. James Joseph Novak.

She can picture the angel wearing his face, harsh and set and not even a flicker backwards to see her one last time. She can picture the bullet holes. She can picture being tucked in at night and holding hands crossing streets and him saying, saying with his dying breath, his last wish, his last voiced thought, _take me_. 

She sleeps the uneasy sleep of hunters.

She dreams in memories.

***

She goes to Bobby’s funeral.

A lot of hunters gather around the pyre. Dean is the one who lights it, face set, face hard, muscles twitching underneath in strong emotions she recognizes. He stares at the fire the whole time it burns. She watches him so she can’t see the figure beside him.  

Hunters line up along the wrecked cars and spill into the house, holding liquor and sharing stories about the dead. It starts with a focus on Bobby -  _and then he tells me it was seven times, so I had to go all the way back to stake the fucker again_ – and move on to the other hunters they have lost.

In a world of periphery people she still feels like an outsider. Part of that she knows is age – she’s the youngest there by fifteen years at least, young enough to be their kid, and one look at what happened to the Winchester brothers shows why being a kid and hunting is not the best idea. Most of it is just because she only knows and recognizes a few names, a few faces, and even less can do the same with her. Bobby had been her hunter resource, her pipeline, her gossip mill, a steady hand at her mother’s funeral and an authoritative voice on the phone. He taught her lore, fake IDs, how to find a case and how to drink. Like most of them there, he had saved her ass more than once.

He kept her a secret, a nice kindness. Hunters liked to know why you got into hunting, but it wasn’t a story she ever wanted to share. So he kept her a secret, away from other hunters.

Away from _them_.

She wanders to the edge of his property and lets them find her. In the corner of her eye she sees them exchange glances, Castiel shaking his head before Dean puts a hand on his shoulder and shoves. The angel moves with it. Pretending to be human or was too human, she didn’t know.

Dean moves to stand next to her. He is older, of course, lines bracketing his eyes, his mouth. There is a dusting of gray in his hair. The past week has given him darker circles under his eyes and a coating of stubble. Whiskey does not stumble out of his pores, but it is close. 

He is a boy who lost another father. She gets that. She understands that.

She lives that.  

They stand in silence for a while. His sorrow is peaceful, in a way. His silence too. The energy that had crackled around him the last time she saw him ( _Cas_ , he had said, but the creature wearing her father did not turn around) was muted, but there was still a draw to him. From the stories Bobby had told her ( _you deserve to know what happened, at least_ ) an angel had defied all of heaven for him. She did not feel the attraction but she could believe it.

“We tried to find you. Wanted to…Guess he taught you how to keep hidden.”

She nods. She has more tattoos than years she has been alive. Most of them one more line of defense against creatures that go bump in the night (or angels searching for their fallen brother’s vessel, or demons for someone delicious to ride), done in shady tattoo parlors that would ignore things like age restrictions.

“He was a good hunter,” she finally says, because in the new world order it was the highest compliment she could give.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, voice just on this side of raw.

They stand in silence for a few more minutes. “I’m sorry,” he says abruptly.

She finally turns and looks at him, honestly surprised. “Wasn’t your fault,” she says. They both ignore the man (angel) standing not that far away, watching them.

“Still,” Dean says, and shifts uncomfortably. “I never said it.”

“I never said thank you either,” she answers. But she doesn’t say it now. Hard to thank the man when he’s still traveling with the one who _was_ at fault.

He shrugs. “You have my number?”

“Yes.” Bobby gave it to her, years ago. _First person you call when you’re in trouble and I can’t help you is Dean_ , he had told her, programming the number in himself. She hasn’t been desperate enough to use it yet; maybe that’ll change now that Bobby can no longer answer speed dial one. 

“Call. If you ever need anything.” He shakes his head. “Just-“ he cuts himself off. “Take care of yourself, Claire,” he finishes, clapping her gently on the back and heading back in. He pauses by Castiel, and they exchange words too low for her to hear. He finally shoves him again and stalks back to the house.

 _And then there was just an angel_ , she thinks, and stifles a giggle. She waits for him to walk that slow, methodical walk over to her. His face is both totally familiar and totally alien, all at once. Her father’s face, and unlike last time now with expressions. And yet, the head cocked slightly, the eyes that never leave yours, the coldness her father never had…all of that makes him just as much not hers as ever, and she finds it easier to face him than she imagined.

She feels her blood pound steadily to her heartbeats. She can’t help the instinctive tightening of muscles, but she uses less energy than she expected to keep from curling her hands into fists and trying to uselessly hurt him.

“Hello Castiel,” she says, and her voice does not shake.

“Hello Claire,” he says, and no, maybe she wasn’t ready, because now she shudders and has to dig nails into her palms to keep steady.

She suddenly feels as young and as lost as that first morning, her mother’s hands fluttering as if she can’t figure out what to do, what to say, how to explain why her husband is missing after being there for so long.

“He’s gone, right?” she asks, almost panting for breath. “He’s not in there anymore, right?”  

“No Claire,” he says, more gentle than she wants to give him credit for. ( _Walking slowly away, not even sparing a glance behind him_.) “He died and went to heaven. He’s been there a long time now.”

“I am sorry for what I’ve taken from you.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” she says. Spits the words out at him like bullets. “That doesn’t make it _right_.”

“No,” he agrees. “It does not.”

“You sorry for trying to take me too?” she asks. Doesn’t really care about the answer. (There are parts inside of her that will always echo the absence of him.)

“Yes,” he says. “You are one of my biggest regrets.”

“I didn’t know angels regretted.” ( _Walking slowly away, not even sparing a glance behind him_.)

“I am not…completely an angel anymore.”

“Bobby said something about that.” 

“Yes, I’m sure he did.”

She doesn’t understand his tone, but her breathing is slowing down again. She is collecting herself, gathering her frayed edges and roughly patching them up again.

“I think I hate you more than anything else I’ve ever come up against,” she finally says, and walks away, refusing to look back at the angel (man) who watches her this time.

Later, later in a motel room in another state, sewing her own flesh together after being thrown through a wall (fucking ghosts), she realizes that is a lie. There is one person she will always hate more than Castiel, who asked her father to give up everything and let him use his body to carry out the will of God.

Because her father said yes. 


End file.
